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The Council of Arches
Hey, no recursing. Synopsis Juniper writes rules for a game of his own creation—''Arches—and prepares a campaign for the Party to play. Solace provides the snacks. Juniper explains the system to the party, and tells them they have to choose one of four decks of cards. The group fights over who gets to choose which, and Juniper calls out Fenn for intentionally being difficult just to create an authentic Tabletop Roleplaying experience. Juniper explains the campaign will take place within a town by the name of Gramp's Hollow. The mayor has had the village's taxes stolen by a band of scurrilies—small, furry and treacherous creatures cursed with profound greed—and it'll be the party's objective to retrieve them from the run-down Cumplebottom Manor. Juniper then tells them to create characters. Some drama ensues over which races to pick, but eventually Amaryllis decides to be an itinerant scholar. Grak gives an elaborate backstory for his fighter. Fenn decides to play as Amaryllis' character's twin, a slink-thief, simply to piss her off. Finally, Juniper lets Solace play a scurrily trying to be free of its greed. The party "rolls" for stats by drawing cards, Fenn's elf luck giving some problems. Amaryllis decides to be a salver, a type of wizard with trees on their heads only they can see, with little fairies living in the tree and doing the wizard's bidding. Juniper describes a tavern where their characters meet. Solace-as-Case approaches Grak-as-Bachewin, and they decide to team up. Amaryllis-as-Miranda and Fenn-as-Adnarim come in through the door, scuffling and almost instantly getting kicked out of the tavern. Miranda offers to fix the damage they've caused, and does so using her fairies. Bachewin offers Miranda and Adnarim a chance to join him and Case in their mission to recover the taxes. Bachewin defends Case from the questionably bigoted accusations that ensue. The party's party approaches Crumplebottom Manor. Miranda fails to make her fairies do some recon, which she hides from the others to save face as a mysterious wizard. Bachewin kicks in the manor door, and they're instantly attacked by scurrilies, triggering a fight. It takes the party twenty in-game seconds to win—about one hour and a half in real life. Fenn, Amaryllis and Grak get distracted by a sudden out-of-character conversation on their races' views on processes and finished products. Juniper tries to get the game back on track and calls it a night when he fails. The others demand angrily to keep the game going, since they're still having fun, and Juniper concedes. The party finds some loot and trinkets, but the treasure isn't among them. Fenn decides to take the trinkets regardless, as well as the scurrilies' ears. Amaryllis gets distracted by the concept of an afterlife in the game world, and cards are flipped to find out, a conversation about each character's views arising. After a few traps and another round of combat—and another hour of real time—the party's party's health is slowly whittled down. They're approaching the final fight, and Fenn decides to make Adnarim abscond from the fight, since she thinks her remaining cards are awful. The party's flips aren't any good, and Bachewin nearly dies. A very lucky flip by Amaryllis saves the day, Miranda drawing her pocket knife and desperately stabbing the last scurrily through the eye. She finishes it off and heals Bachewin with the help of another favorable flip. Adnarim rejoins the group and they loot the bodies, finding out the town's tax is actually vials of liquid mana collected from the surrounding land. Miranda decides to take the tax back to the mayor, and the group decide to help Case on its quest to speak with its god afterwards. Juniper finally ends the game for the night, everyone mentioning how much they enjoyed it, but Grak and Fenn complaining about the lack of rules getting in the way. The day after, Solace and Juniper talk about fireside storytelling, her mentioning it was much like their roleplaying and sharing a story about a man that flirted with her during the process. Juniper wonders about the man's ultimate fate, but decides to let Solace focus on the happier times. Featured characters *Juniper Smith as the Dungeon Master *Amaryllis Penndraig as 'Miranda' *Fenn Greenglass as 'Adnarim' *Grakhuil Leadbraids as 'Bachewin' *Oorang Solace as 'Case' Quotes “You said that this was how it goes with a gaming group. I just wanted the experience to be authentic. Should I have waited to get distracted on side topics until we’re roleplaying?” “I fear for my sanity.” :—'Fenn''' tries her best to annoy Juniper. “There are cleavages. Cracks. In reality. Visible to only a few bloodlines. I can see the edges of her crystals.” :—'Grak' improvises some good roleplaying. “I have a bad feeling.” “I have a bad feeling too,” said Grak. “As I have been stabbed and am dying.” :—'Fenn' sets up some of Grak's famous dwarf humor. “Alright. I’m going to run.” “The fuck you are.” “No, I am. It’s been real, but I’m not dying down here. Joon, I run.” “Joon, I use the leash.” :—'Fenn' and Amaryllis display their bond of sisterhood. “The God’s Tongue,” she said in a solemn whisper. “How much do you know about what it does?” “I’ve heard only whispers. But those whispers seem to indicate that it allows a discussion with the gods, so long as you stand within their place of power. I snatch up the orb from the pile and place it into a pouch I had kept empty for it.” :—'Solace' improvises an objective for their next game, with a little prompting from Juniper. Notes *Most of The Council of Arches was written concurrently with chapter 56, "Vacations Vocations" - this side-story takes place during the events of that chapter, and is best read before it. It was completed and released once the $300 goal on Alexander Wales' Patreon was reached. When I reach $300 a month, a mostly-written side story, chronicling the group's first session of Arches (taking place around chapter 56 of Worth the Candle) will be completed and freely published, along with the notes for how to play the cobbled together tabletop game on your own. The story was written as an experiment in making a tabletop session readable, as well as working on large group interactions, and to a lesser extent, characterization. —Alexander Wales on Patreon *The rules for Arches are available in the story's second chapter. *Alexander Wales had three main reasons for including discard piles, rather than just shuffling the cards each time: **Streaks of bad luck are balanced by streaks of good luck. **Shuffling is a lot of work. **The discard piles open design space for magic items, abilities and the likes. *While writing this story, Alexander Wales actually flipped cards in real life - though he didn't feel beholden to the results, and he only flipped cards twice during the story itself. *Alexander Wales has jokingly noted that he'd try to avoid ever writing another story where each character is using two names at once - he kept mixing them up, and a few of those errors slipped through into the story's initial release. *He's also suggested that - in an alternate universe where Worth the Candle is wildly popular - a physical version of Arches would be released, consisting of a deck of 60 cards, a single folded page of rules, and some simple playing-card-sized character sheets. The arche cards themselves might have portraits from the characters of the story. The best way to make that universe this universe is, of course, to tell all your friends about the story. Real-world references *Juniper references the real-world concept of - the conflict between the narrative of a video game and the narrative of its gameplay. *Oros Olympos - the high place where the gods of the game world live - is clearly inspired by Earth's . *The party grapples with the concept of paper beating rock in . *Juniper mentions the afterlife of the game world comes from an old campaign, itself adapted from a sitcom on NBC. He's referring to , in which groups of dead people share big neighborhoods. *Arches' action economy is based on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editions_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#Dungeons_&_Dragons_5th_edition Dungeons & Dragons' 5th edition] standard.